This week marked the finishing of modelling for the environment, both the UK shed and the African village. Once everyone had finished modelling, I took the assets and checked the topology to ensure they worked well. I then was responsible for UV mapping many of the objects, as it is a thing many of the team had never done before. I uv mapped most of the environmental assets and all of the characters.

I then began to texture the assets in substance painter. I gave them realistic maps, but used the diffuse to create a more painterly look.

I started with some of the shed assets, to test the style, before moving onto the African environment. We agreed on the style I had achieved and I then went on to texture the rest of the environment.

This week led to the beginning of planning for our environments. We had a late night meeting to discuss what each person would be modelling. Rhea was the exemption from environmental modelling as she was our character artist. We then marked off each asset as it was completed.

separate environments

Shed- UK

Shed- bike shed- Rebecca DONE

Wooden fence/ceramic wall- Rebecca DONE

hedge in behind- Rhea

flowers growing above -Rhea

hanging plants on fence-rhea

truck/van- jack

Desert- Africa

rocky sandy road-jack

tall grass-model – jack DONE

tall tree- Rhea

Village-Africa

washing line-Lorna DONE

houses- modular and clinic- Rebecca

pots/bowls- cassie DONE

telephone poles- cassie DONE

chairs-benches jack

water tanks lorna DONE

broom – cassie DONE

wheelie bin – jack DONE

bucket -cassie DONE

numbers on houses – becca

fences – jack DONE

Gnomes –

balls- cassie DONE

Rock- cassie

Bike -Lorna

Characters

Nurse

Volunteer

Animations

slumped walking- nurse

taking bike from shed

Below is a rendition of the completed shed scene. The cube in the corner is representative of the truck that will replace it.

Sunday 9th July- the day was spent settling in, getting shopping and living basics (a lot of people didn’t have scales to weigh their suitcase and so only had along the lines of 11kg of stuff for 7 weeks (ouch).

Monday 10th July- Induction day. We were given our passwords and sign ins, allowed to download any extra softwares on the computers and prepare our resources. We also met the technical team (imagine three Mikes), the course director and BFX organisers.

We also received our SISO training, showing us how to book out the various equipment needed and how to fill out the risk assessments etc.

Tuesday 11th July- Rhea arrives, lots of practising throughout the day for our presentation (we are pretty petrified given the reputation of Bournemouth Students).

Wednesday 12th July- presentation day

Both our teams were petrified, as this was the first presentation of this style in front of anyone of higher calibre.

I was utterly shocked by how well our presentations went. It turns out that Bournemouth Uni and the Falmouth University don’t do very much presenting or group work, so we were super prepared.

They commented on our presentation skills, and understanding of typography and alignment in our presentation skills (thank you Conann). They also made comment on how we had went through and completed a lot of the feedback, clarifying how much work we had done.

Originally I was worried about our animatic, this was a comment also brought up by one of the mentors, stating that there was a look of frames in our storyboard. However it was mentioned that we had a good use of a variety of camera angles, interesting ones that could change the story quite drastically without having to show cliche animation/cue. Another mentor commented that there were a few shots that the camera didn’t work as hard- and to cut to 10-13 shots, something we have now rectified.

They also mentioned our characters- one mentor bringing up that he was worried it would be hard to get a lot of emotion across with such small eyes, however, Rhea had added little pose sketches of the characters, and he said we completely counter acted what he would have presumed.

Above is us presenting and here is a link to the presentation.

Thursday 13th July- After the adventure of last night, we had to be up at 9am for our camera training at Elliot Road Studios,

We were given a vigorous training in camera studies- going over the basic functions, aperature, ISO and shutter speed, and then allowed to test out the cameras, and their various lens.

After this we were given training on the Vari-cams. Shown how to set one up, how to record and then how to use the monitors. We were also informed on some of the safety precautions involved with these cameras too. Although none of us are actually doing any live actions/ tracking etc it was incredibly useful- especially with refreshing the different camera settings- this will come in 100% useful at a later stage.

Below are some of the photos from the training, I skillfully dodged a lot of these.

This semester has been a huge learning curve for me, giving me a huge confidence leap towards exploring different softwares and working outside of my comfort zone. I have realised that I do enjoy the 3D elements I am working towards and hope to get better especially with Zbrush. I am finding that I am immensely enjoying character design and texturing, loving creating characters to go alongside the briefs given.

It has taught me a lot with interaction with clients and how to work with those with changing visions or ideas. I enjoyed working for MashMob and definitely will consider working there for my own placement in the upcoming year.

Here is to placement year- hoping I find one. If not, I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

After what we thought may be our ‘final’ meeting today- we have a few changes to make to our work. However, due to the time constraints and continuation with other projects and our essay, we have agreed to make these after our deadline, as a sort of side project.

Below is the final animation video we are bringing to MashMob. There are a few things we need to fix- notably animations on both the chicken and the octopus, as they were keyframed in the wrong position. The chicken was pretty easy to fix itself, as once Robert added a further control we could move the character into position. There was slight shifting in the feet- something we will need to look at fixing at a later date.

The octopus, on the other hand, was a different story. Despite a locked camera and environment- the character was animated through the shelves. This resulted in us having to render the octopus on a separate pass, however the lighting came into play here, making it look off. This is definitely something that will need fixed, as it currently looks terrible.

Posted this image online and received some feedback on Mr Robot. Michael and Eric (my two unofficial after school mentors) gave some suggestions on his mouth to fix the stretch of UV’s.

Michael suggested that with using Substance Painter to add two more subdivisions to the model before painting, stating “It’s a pretty good way of compensating for subdivisions effecting your uvs at render time.”

Michael also explained it was an artefact known as Catmul-Clark subdivisions, created as these only preserve border UV’s. He commented that it was more than likely a stretch UV seam.

I wanted to know what Catmul-Clark subdivisions are so had a look online. Literally I already knew what it was- just not the actual name.

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